Site near USF considered for coroner's new offices

UNIVERSITY NORTH -- A new office for the Hillsborough County coroner is long overdue. But county officials believe they have the perfect location for a new facility: land near the University of South Florida.

The site, a half-mile south of Fowler Avenue on the east side of 46th Street near the USF Medical School, "would lend itself for research and possibly future partnerships between the medical school and forensics," said county spokesman Steve Valdez.

County officials, however, must hold a public meeting on the proposed relocation and construction. The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Museum of Science & Industry, (MOSI) 4801 E Fowler Ave.

The new site would provide plenty of room for the proposed $8-million, 40,000-square-foot building, which would replace the medical examiner's office downtown.

"They are just busting at the seams," Valdez said. From size to design, the office "is incredibly inadequate."

Built in downtown Tampa more than 30 years ago, the medical examiner's office sits on what is now prime real estate a stone's throw from the Ice Palace on land that was once "just a warehouse district on the decline," Valdez said.

Then "it was the perfect place to put it, close to Tampa General Hospital on relatively inexpensive property."

Now, however, the building is "absolutely horrendous, from the ventilation to the soundproofing between the offices and the rooms they do autopsies in," Valdez said.

The current location also would be inadequate if there were a major mishap or disaster involving large numbers of bodies, Valdez said. "For a metropolitan city as large as Tampa and Hillsborough County, we need a decent facility that can perform all the needed jobs today in forensics in a current technology setting."

- Jackie Ripley can be reached at (813) 226-3468

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